You think you know “Cool Britannia” do you? But how much do you [i]really[/i] know? Here are some facts…

1. There are more than 140,000 racial attacks in the UK each year.
2. London’s children speak more than 130 languages.
3. There are over 1,000 mosques in Britain and 15,000 Muslim doctors.
4. Presently, five out of 514 circuit court judges are black, compared with three out of 480 in 1992.
5. There were 1,306 ethnic minority officers in a police force of 122,265, a percentage of 1.06. This rose in 1985 to 2,223 out of 127,222 in 1995.
6. The most strikingly upwardly mobile ethnic group are the Chinese, of whom 13 per cent are in professional jobs, compared with five per cent in the white population.
7. King Henry VII and VIII employed a black trumpeter known as John Blanke (White). He earned 8d a day in November 1507.
8. Research by Manchester University finds that Britain’s ethnic minority population is unlikely to rise above 10 per cent of the whole.
9. 53 per cent of the current black Caribbean community were born in the UK and 67,000 people described themselves as ‘Black British’.
10. Racial discrimination is rife within the British criminal justice system. The higher echelons of the judiciary, police and the probation service remain white, and black people are more likely to be stopped and searched.
11. Africans were in Britain before the English arrived. They served in the Roman army which occupied southern Britain for 350 years. In AD 210 Libyan-born Septimius Severus, Emperor of Rome, arrived to inspect Hadrian’s Wall where a unit of Ethiopians was stationed at Aballava (now Burgh-by-Sands) near Carlisle.
12. Ethnic minority groups suffer higher rates of unemployment according to [url=http://www.statistics.gov.uk]UK National Statistics[/url] as at Spring 2002. Specific number of those working in (brackets) and a selective breakdown shows:- Bangladeshis are the hardest hit at 24% (58,000)
    Black Africans 14.6% (189,000)
    Other Etnic Group 12.3% (157,000)
    Pakistanis 12.2% (196,000)
    Black Caribbeans 11.4% (264,000)
    Indians 6.2% (469,000)
    Chinese Too small for reliable estimate but higher than Whites (90,000)
    Whites at 4.7% (26,696,000)
    This is despite the fact that Chinese and Black African populations have a higher average level of educational attain than the white population.
13. As at April 2001 there were 58,789,194 people living in the UK comprising the following:-

    Whites 54,153,898 (92%)
    Mixed 677,117 (1%)
    Indian 1,053,411 (1.79%)
    Pakistani 747,285 (1.27%)
    Bangladeshi 283,063 (0.48%)
    Other Asian 247,664 (0.42%)
    Black Caribbean 565,876 (0.96%)
    Black African 485,277 (0.82%)
    Black Other 97,585 (0.16%)
    Chinese 247,403 (0.42%)
    Other 230,615 (0.39%)

    A total of only 7.9% of the UK population are from an ethnic background with Indians making up the largest ethnic group, followed by Pakistanis, Mixed ethnic backgrounds, Black Caribbeans, Black Africans and Bangladeshis. [SOURCE: UK National Statistics Office, 2001

14. Queen Elizabeth I berated the buccaneer John Hawkyns for trafficking in black slaves in 1563. She described it as 'detestable and would call down the Vengeance of Heaven upon the Undertakers'.
15. In 1952 US restriction on West Indian migrants caused Caribbean Immigration to the UK to rise from 1,000 per year to 34,000 in 1962, stabilising at 7,000 per year in the late '60s.
16. The first political leader of Britain's black community was Olaudah Equiano from Eastern Nigeria, who arrived here in 1757, aged 12.
17. The Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole, whose reputation rivalled Florence Nightingale's after the Crimean War, was "cheered and chaired...by adorning soldiers".
18. The first Asian to engage in politics was the poet, philosopher, reformer and journalist Raja Rammohan Roy. Between 1830-1833 Roy submitted "the first authentic statement of Indian views" to the Parliamentary Committee on Indian Affairs.
19. The first Asian to be elected to the House of Commons was Dadabhai Naoroji who as Liberal MP for Central Finsbury in 1892.
20. The first African students' union was founded in 1917.
21. The remains of a young African girl were found in a burial dated c1000 at North Elmham, Norfolk.
22. In 1995 [url=http://www.yush.com]YUSH Ponline[/url] became the first website in the UK with articles and content of interest to Black people. At the time it was also heralded in the mainstream media as Britain’s first Black website…
23. In the North and Scotland just over 1.3 per cent of the population are from ethnic minorities; 8.2 in the West Midlands; 4.8 in the East Midlands; 4.4 in Yorkshire; 1.5 in Wales; while 1 in 10 people in the South-East have African, Caribbean or Asian origins.
24. There are only 891,000 people (or 1.6%) of African-Caribbean descent in the country out of a total population of 54,889,000.
25. First effective black pressure group, the League of Coloured Peoples, was founded by Dr. Harold Arundel Moody in 1931. Stella Thomas, another member, became the first black woman to be called to the Bar in 1933.
26. The London town of Brixton, popularly conceived as a totally black, inner-city area, actually comprise Whites 62.20 % and blacks 42.23.